Eventing News and Notes: April 2010 Archives

As we reported yesterday, Oliver Townend and William Fox Pitt have been forced to find an alternative route to Kentucky due to massive flight cancellations in the UK caused by the Icelandic volcano that erupted last week.  Both Willaim and Olliver took equally amazing trips to Madrid, Spain, where they could catch a flight to Miami this afternoon.

Ocala CCI: Tiffany Loudon-Meetz and Lo Fino jumped a clean round with no rails in hand to win the CCI2* and $6,000 prize money  EN's Hannah Burnett won the CCI* riding Harbor Pilot for David.  After entering the arena tied for the lead, she had one time penalty in show jumping, but the final rider pulled three.  Sure, catch ride a horse normally ridden by your coach, an Olympic champion who also happens to be a perfectionist when it comes to horses: no pressure Hannah.

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Fallout continues from the McLain Ward and Sapphire disqualification at the FEI world cup finals.  The Cliff-Notes version of this story is that Sapphire was disqualified because of a hypersensitivity (palpation) and thermography scan conducted by FEI vets.  There was no jog involved, and there is no appeals process for such a disqualification.  The USEF, McLain, George Morris, and everyone else are furious over this incident and have been making implications of corruption in the FEI's decision all weekend, such as George saying he felt very far from home.  Angry editorial from HJN, Second USEF statement, FEI refuses emergency US request, COTH article

Rolex will also be the dressage and show jumping test event for the WEG.  I have written about this before, but the idea here is to simulate a larger event than Rolex to help the many amazing WEG organizers and workers get everything practiced and perfect for the WEGs.

Best of the Blogs: Boyd's Rolex preview

Evening Update: *Badminton XC Course Preview, Top 10 Things to Know About Clean Sport (from the FEI)

The FEI has warned riders that they face a 2-year ban if they are caught using banned substances.  I believe that a two year ban for a first offense is consistent with most other Olympic sports and seems like an appropriate length of time to me because anything shorter that a half-year lets offenders time the enforcement so they don't miss any three-days, and anything much longer would be overly punitive and probably completely ruin someone's career, although if you get caught cheating then I don't really care. 

Courtney-King Dye is making great strides in recovery, and is fully alert and talking, according to one of Lendon Grey's Facebook page updates.  You can see an amusing difference in coverage from this article and this article.  

*Land Rover had become the official vehicle of the USEF.  Even if you have already heard about this, you want to read this particular story.

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The FEI and USEF have initiated possible abuse charges against show jumper Michael Morrisey for beating his horse repeatedly.  A few thoughts: first, this shows the extraordinary power of video combined with members of the new media.  As Fran Jurga explains in her article, blogger Karen Robinson of the Straight Up blog was the first to write about the incident.  However, without the video, she was just a writer telling a story.  Once the Youtube video (below) started being seen by other members of the equestrian new media, we (The Carrot, Eventing Nation, and others) started writing about the incident and publishing the video.  Eventing Nation linked to the video on Monday and it had 1,000 views at the time.  Just two days later it has 17,000, and the amazing thing about those numbers is that, generally, the major members of the equestrian media completely ignored the story until the FEI sent out its press release yesterday.

My second thought is that the FEI deserves credit for making the right decision even if they were a couple of weeks late.  Policing so many horse sports at competitions across the globe is a very challenging task, and, while the FEI should have been faster to initiate charges, they ultimately made the right decision, which is the most important thing.

Third: from here on out, riders need to assume that the camera is always rolling at competitions.  Anything you say or do can and will be plastered all over the internet and used against you in the court of public opinion.

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Best of the Blogs: Laine Ashker likes her Rolex number, Steph Rhodes-Bosch is starting to believe, *what Chelan learned from watching a lesson with David.  Note: Chelan's blog entry is one of my favorites by a rider: she uses her personality to tell about an experience that is very educational to the reader.

I'm Feeling Lucky~from Andrea

News of the Weird: Drunk man rides horse into Tennessee mule festival.  How did police know he was drunk?  He was asking for beer.

A giant horse as high as the Statue of Liberty is being built in England: "It has been created by Mark Wallinger, who once dressed up in a furry bear suit and wandered around a Berlin gallery in the name of art."

I had a history teacher in high school who told me that the media is filled with the laziest people on the planet and that 95% of journalists just wait for a story to hit them in the face before they will cover it.  Having spent the last 6 months closely watching the media for Eventing Nation, I tend to agree.  I have tremendous respect for our friends in the equestrian media who spend all day out in the blazing sun watching and taking pictures,  then going back to their hotels to spend half the night writing for websites and magazines, but unfortunately this is just a small fraction of the media.  The story here isn't the story, but rather that the story has officially gone mainstream.  

Update: I have heard that the NYT held off on reporting the story because they wanted to let the initial fury die down so that they could delve into the deeper HIV related issues.  I think Katie Thomas did a great job with the article, and she really developed the issue of HIV related laws thoroughly.  The unfortunate thing is that for most of the NYT's audience this will be the only article about eventing they will read all year.  Unfortunately, in general, the mainstream media only covers our sport when bad things happen.

WIN: The USEA has launched a new site today called Discover Eventing, which educates eventers and prospective eventers about the sport.  A lot of the content is oriented towards people with little eventing experience who are looking to get into the sport, which makes it a great referral if you have friends who might like to start eventing.

The Carrot writes about an interesting situation in show jumping that could apply to eventing, where a rider goes completely overboard beating his horse at a competition.  This situation demonstrates the power of video, and this rider is neither the first nor the last to be caught on youtube doing something idiotic.   From here on out, assume that cameras are always rolling at competitions.  The Carrot provides a good summary of the situation, but it's important to always remember perspective, and The Carrot's perspective is anti-FEI.

Afternoon update: FEI to freeze rankings for riders on maternity leave, Ashley Adams part 11

Kentuckians will get to purchase Ground Passes (tickets to get into the Horse Park) for the WEGs at the discounted price of $15 on April 15th, but XC day is excluded.  Ahhh, the joys of extracting consumer surplus.

Courtney King-Dye has spoken her first words, and said "thank you for your hard work" to one of her nurses.  Courtesy of Horesetalk.co.nz

The field is set for the Grand National Chase in GBR.  I spoke with a gentleman from the UK several months ago who explained to me that the Grand National is a truly incredible test of the horse and is a very big deal in Great Britain.

TJR: FEI to release clarification of difference between rollkur vs LDR and explain "aggressive riding"

Best of the Blogs: Alex Hua Tian

We mentioned a few weeks ago that Stephen Bradley rode Leyland and Coal Creek at Southern Pines II because Amy had a minor medical procedure that would sideline her for a couple of weeks.  This weekend, Amy rode both horses in the Advanced at The Fork, and had excellent rides all weekend.  Coal Creek finished 6th, and Leyland 11th, and both had the right amount of XC time penalties to get a feel for the speed while saving them for Kentucky.  

The only thing is that Amy's knee (which had a microscopic procedure) hadn't healed as quickly as the doctors anticipated.  I won't get into the grizzly medical details, but suffice it to say that the knee was enough of an issue that Amy was bleeding though the knee of her britches during the show jumping.  

Despite what can only have been a very painful experience riding two horses around advanced dressage, XC, and show jumping (not to mention all the coursewalks, etc.), I never once heard about Amy complaining or saw her wince.  

Important: This isn't a story to start speculation about Amy's knee for Kentucky.  Amy answered any possible questions about the knee being ready for Rolex by riding two horses around the advanced this weekend, just a few weeks after surgery.

Amy is known as one of the toughest people in eventing, and she lived up to and well beyond that reputation this weekend.  This is Curt Schilling pitching in the World Series with a bloody ankle, Tiger winning the US Open on one knee type of toughness, and exactly the type of intestinal fortitude that the US Team needs this fall.  Let's be ready to give Amy an extra loud cheer around Rolex.

Evening Update: Paddock Vac sponsors dressage rider Betsy Steiner.  A few weeks ago, AH sent me a funny link to Pasture Vac, but I forgot to do something with it for the site until now.  Pasture Vac is a vacuum for horse crap, and ranks right up there with the vibrating Shake'n Fork as perhaps the laziest product in the horse world.  Why go through the trouble of scooping poop into a wheelbarrow when you can buy a $4,000 machine to vacuum poo from the luxury of the sitting position (tractor not included).  Visit pasturevacuums.com for more information, including the fun fact "A horse weighing 1000 lbs. produces an average of 9 tons of manure every year."

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It's a pretty slow news day in eventing, as everyone is still recovering from The Fork, but here are a few stories for your reading pleasure:

Amanda Atkins won the first T3DE of 2010.

The USEF Training Three-Day dressage tests are now available.

The Horse and Hound talks about the new FEI doping regulations.

TC has an amusing article about the Google search terms people use to get to their site (explicit language warning).  Google is awesome, and has been very kind in their rankings of EN considering we are so young, but we also get some traffic from pretty amusing searches.  One of my all time favorites is someone in Sri Lanka who arrived from Google after searching "live sults" after our Kelly Sult live blog.

Best of the Blogs: Steph Rhodes-Bosch from The Fork, Alex Hua Tian prepares for Badders, Sara Stretton is still recovering, JB is back in PA

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And now for something completely different: I'm getting a little frustrated with several (4ish) other sites finding news and content on EN and putting that content right onto their sites without reference to Eventing Nation.  Our policy on Eventing Nation is to always link to the original story and give credit to anyone who we found the story through if we didn't find it at the original source.  I'm glad we are so fast at finding news, and of course I'm more than happy for other sites to share that news, but when someone clearly finds something through us and then uses it  without referencing us, it bothers me.

Our analytics program shows the company names of commercial IP addresses, and it's fairly common to see site X visit EN, and then 10 minutes later a video or a news story we just posted shows up on their site without any reference to EN.  This kind of thing is completely legal, but violates common courtesy and I think it's against the camaraderie and principles of working together fundamental to eventing.  I'm not annoyed enough to time-stamp screenshot the analytics page when they visit, and then their site when they post it, and then post it, but that's entirely possible.  Of course, we have gotten tremendous support, especially early on, from sites linking to us, and we protect our friends at EN.  Go eventing together.

Happy day after Easter Eventing Nation!  It's a big news day throughout the equestrian world, so lets jump right into it:

--First and most importantly, because today is the day after Easter, marshmallow Peeps go on sale throughout the World.  Are Peeps candy, are they dessert, are they dinner, or are they post-armageddon survival food?  I have no idea, but they are just as tasty today as they were 24 hours ago, so take your truck and trailer to Wal Mart and stock up for the year.  Peep Research, Peeps diorama contest, 100 ways to kill a Peep

--Secondly, *drumroll* the FEI's new anti-doping regulations go into effect today.  The new lingo is that "Prohibited Substances" are substances that are not allowed at competitions, "Banned Substances" are substances that "have no place in equestrian sport," while substances commonly used in equine medication but that are prohibited in competition are "Controlled Medication Substances."  Easy squeezey lemon peasey, right?  FEI Press Release, Prohibited Substances Database, Prohibited Substances List, Rules

As an interesting test of your vet's sports medicine orientation, you could ask them what they think of the FEI's new anti-doping regulations.  If they enter into a long talk about the nuances of Bute's time levels in the bloodstream and the effects of mixing drugs, then that's great.  If they seem surprised that things have changed, you might want to get ahold of another vet to help you before three-days.  If they ask "what's the FEI?" then you might want to move out of North Dakota.

--If you missed this last Friday, Shelby French had an interesting article about the different intercollegiate riding programs for the COTH.

Barn politics are the number one reason people change barns.

Happy belated 150th anniversary to the Pony Express.

Best of the Blogs: Laine Ashker's Fork recap, Chelan Kozac.  Note: if you write great blog entries and want them to be featured as part of our Best of the Blogs, shoot me an email with a link to the blog and I'll have a look.

3D3W: Gina Miles (Part II) Among other things, Gina says of McKinlaigh: "I think we're probably gonna steer him more in a direction of lower stuff...The Olympics is a good way to finish out a career."  There is nothing shocking about this news, but it has been sad to see this spring that one of the USA's most prolific international horses will likely not compete at the upper levels again.

Scientists in the Transport Research Laboratory in the UK studied the Point Two air jackets and determined that there is no evidence that Point two "would exacerbate a neck injury in an accident," and that wearing traditional body armor with Point Two is preferable to Point Two alone.  This is very early independent testing, which was aimed mostly at making sure using Point Two does not have any worse effect, but the results seem positive.

British Eventing has posted information about the new FEI doping regulations.

A new group Loving Owners Object to Fat (LOOF) is buying scales for horse shows to "name and shame" owners of fat horses.  Do you really need a scale to tell that a horse is fat?

A survey finds that older people own more horses, with horse owners older than 65 averaging over 6 equines.  These results are probably primarily due to a correlation between income and horse ownership (older people have higher incomes).  Using these awesome statistical methods we might as well announce breaking news that daily metamucil consumption levels, slow driving, and TV guide subscriptions are all predictors of horse ownership levels.

Josh Walker makes some freakishly good videos.  Check out his preview of EventingUSA 2.0.  

Best of the Blogs: Steph Rhodes-Bosch the night before Fork dressage, AA teaches the 'UKY' event team